Aloysius Archer is a combat veteran of World War II and also an ex-con who was sent to prison for a crime he was tricked into. When he’s released on parole in 1949, he winds up in Poca City, a small city in an unidentified Western state that’s probably Colorado, based on geographic clues in David Baldacci’s novel ONE GOOD DEED. Although Archer is supposed to stay out of trouble, he soon finds himself working for a rich local businessman, hired to collect a debt from the guy’s mortal enemy. Not only that, but Archer gets involved with the rich man’s beautiful mistress, who just happens to be the daughter of the man who owes the debt. Add a beautiful female parole officer with a deadly background of her own into the mix, and then a murder where it looks like Archer has been set up to be the fall guy, and you have the makings of a tough, terse Gold Medal-type novel, which is exactly what I think perennial bestseller Baldacci was trying to write in ONE GOOD DEED.
This trend continues with more murders, convoluted criminal schemes, the
spectre of past crimes haunting the present, and some excellent action scenes.
The problem is that Harry Whittington or Day Keene or Charles Williams would
have spun this same yarn in 160 or 144 or even 128 pages, and David Baldacci takes
464 pages to tell his story.
I suspect there are two reasons for this: Baldacci’s publishers would have balked
if he’d turned in a 40,000-50,000 word manuscript, and Baldacci, who has been
writing fat contemporary thrillers for more than two decades (and very
successfully, I might add) just doesn’t know how to write shorter books. This
one could have been trimmed considerably by just not describing in detail every
item of clothing and every piece of furniture, sometimes more than once.
But other than the length, which I really shouldn’t be complaining about
because I knew it was that long when I started it—and it’s really not fair to
judge books written today by the standards of books written 70 or more years
ago (and vice versa)—how was it? Well, I read the whole thing and didn’t
consider stopping (skimming did enter my mind a time or two, but I didn’t do it),
so I’d have to say I liked it fairly well. Yes, it’s too long. Yes, there are
some anachronisms. No, Baldacci doesn’t even come close to playing fair with
the reader where the solution to the mystery is concerned. But the plot is
interesting, the characters are good, and Archer is a great protagonist, smart
and tough enough to untangle everything but far from a superman like Jack
Reacher. I really liked the guy. Everything wraps up in a long, effective
courtroom scene a little reminiscent of a Perry Mason novel.
There are two more novels, so far, about Aloysius Archer. Did I enjoy ONE GOOD
DEED enough to read them, too? The jury is still out on that (no pun intended),
but honestly, I’m leaning toward giving the second one a try. If I do, I’m sure
you’ll read about it here.
3 comments:
I’m with you concerning word count in modern fiction; sometimes it’s just too long. A hard boiled crime thriller should really clip along at a brisk pace, and 450+ pages doesn’t generally translate into a brisk pace. I believe S&S also works best as a short novel or novella. I have heard rumblings about shorter novels becoming more common due to paper costs and publishers trying to keep costs down, but I don’t know if that’s an actual trend. I’m hoping that there’s some truth to the rumor…
I'm doing the Snakehaven series as connected novellas for that very reason. It was common in the pulps to do linked novellas and then publish them as a fix-up novel later on. Howard Andrew Jones is doing that with his Hanuvar stories now, and it works really, really well. Hammett's RED HARVEST and THE DAIN CURSE originated in the same fashion, which has me pondering the idea of doing some hardboiled novellas like that. I really love the 20K-40K length as both a writer and a reader, and it's also easier to work in between the longer projects I do as a ghostwriter.
Bleah. I'm just old enough to remember when it was still easy to find really good books under 200 pages. By the time I was in college the bloat was in full swing, and these days we're seeing 800+ page books that have less actual content than 180 pages of most books from my youth. Way too few writers or editors remember how to tell a story concisely these days, and there are too many formerly good authors who've been spoiled rotten (in every sense of the term) by lax editing.
I saw a 1300 page mass market the other day that had the temerity to be the first in series. Pass. Hard pass.
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